Pakistan Times : Appeal against deportation filed by detained Pak students

Appeal against deportation filed by detained Pak students

'Pakistan Times' Foreign Desk | May 2, 2009

LONDON (UK): Four out of the ten Pakistani students arrested on terrorism suspicion by the British authorities last month and subsequently released after the charges were dropped, have now filed appeal against their deportation.

This was stated by lawyer Amjad Malik who was asked by Pakistan High Commission to represent 4 out of 10 Pakistani national students currently detained at Manchester prison and awaiting deportation on national security grounds.

The first hearing of all 10 students appeal is likely to be set in first two weeks of the current month. The four students are kept in highly secure “category A” at Manchester prison on the orders of UK Border Agency.

Malik said that legal team along with Pakistani Consul General in Manchester Masroor Junejo and Welfare Attache Amir Nisar Chaudhry met all detained students namely Shoaib Khan, Abdul Wahab Khan, Tariq ur Rehman and Abid Naseer who have instructed him to file their appeals which have been lodged with the required court with effect from April 28.

Though no charges were brought under criminal proceedings against the students and on April 21 they were released from criminal investigation to UK Border Agency who initiated immigration deportation proceedings.

According to Malik, the appeals have been lodged on the grounds that the appellants are racially discriminated being Pakistani nationals and being Muslims and that it would be against appellant’s rights under ECHR for UK to remove or deport them from Britain because the country is signatory to the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.

Furthermore, the British Home Secretary has not put forward any concrete evidence in her contention that the appellants are a threat to “national security” of the UK and or even if there is any reason to support that contention, the proper course of action would be to charge the appellant and brought them before the court of law in a criminal proceedings.

But such proceedings has never been ensued and no charges were put forward by the Crown Prosecution Service. Therefore there is no evidence to support any charges against the appellants and their arrest, detention and continuing incarceration is unlawful, and unreasonable and without any substance; The appeal also said the appellants have been subjected to a one sided media trial at that time when they were incommunicado without a lawyer, consulate access and without a phone call to their family.

They have also felt that they have been made a scapegoat and immigration decision is but an effort to avoid answers to questions on the failure of the operation “Pathway” in order to divert attention from their innocence as the appellants feel that they are “innocent” until ‘proven guilty’ by a court of law.